How can I reuse or recycle baby sleeper suits/onsies?

We’ve already talked about baby clothes in general but CD, who writes the Canadian Doomer blog, has sent over such an excellent reuse idea for worn out baby sleepers/romper suits that I thought it was worth featuring these in particular:

I just posted this on my blog, and one of my readers thought your site might be interested. They’d have be super-frugal and have a real sense of the absurd.

I had recently read about someone making no-sew cloth menstrual pads by folding cut-up facecloths and placing them inside a longer folded
facecloth. Well, I’m not about to cut up my facecloths for that. However, with two small children, I have a LOT of baby sleepers that are becoming too raggedy to wear, but are still soft and amazingly absorbent.

So I cut off legs, leaving snaps attached. Then I cut off arms. I cut the body of the sleepers up so that I had various sizes of cloth without bulky seams. It’s quite an easy matter to fold a piece of the fabric into half or thirds and tuck it inside an “arm” (gravity-held) or “leg” (snap-on style) tube. I also made one that was essentially the entire upper body of a thin sleeper, making a “belt-style” for overnight, which I safety-pinned to my underwear.

Great reuse since it really will help reduce wastage in the future.

Any other suggestions for reusing or recycling them? Particularly ideas taking advantage of their super-softness — and also often their cute patterns?

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6 Responses to “How can I reuse or recycle baby sleeper suits/onsies?”


  1. Petra says:

    I think it’s a great idea, but would it be possible to send a picture? Since, I really have problems in understanding the description above.
    (And now I have to think whether I still have some of these old babysleepers)

    • I’ll take some pictures and post them on my blog. Perfect timing, because tomorrow (Tuesday) is my Health & Hygiene topic. :)

      By the way, but I only used sleepers that were really too worn and raggedy in the feet, or the snaps, etc. had broken, or they had a really bad stain, so that they weren’t worth keeping or passing along.

      • Petra says:

        When first reading it, I thought that you reused the part with the snaps to fix it in your underwear. That would be really great reuse. But when thinking it over, I couldn’t find a way to do so, unfortunately.

  2. keep for the same child that slept in it as they may have dolls in the future they will want to dress.

    Alternatively the material doubles as an excellent dusting material in general.

  3. I make cloth wipes from them, and use them as liners in our cloth diapers/nappies when I need to use rash cream (almost never, but just in case). If there are good pieces bigger than 2″, I keep them for patchwork.

  4. Alice says:

    Loads of people seem to use cotton wool pads for applying moisturiser or facial cleansing stuff, makeup remover etc. I hardly ever use products like that, but when I do I use bits of soft cloth like this instead of cotton wool.

    Throw them in the wash and reuse them instead of filling the bin with cotton wool.



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